The fun ride - 18 September 2008

Wheeee! All sorts of fun to provide for those who find this informative or useful. And for the rest of you, well, I’m sure you can “tl: dr” with the best of them. Let’s go.

First up, Hurricane Ike has wrought hell with Houston and Galveston, including overwhelming demand for food assistance from the food bank. cmpriest has compiled a list of food banks and charities in the area that need assistance so they can give assistance to those recovering from the hurricane.

Professionally and personally, my eyes pop at the announcement that the author of the wildly popular Artemis Fowl series will be penning the sixth Hitchiker's Guide book. It could be good. It could be bad, it could be utterly un-Adams-like. We’ll see.

For the teachers on my list (or those that work with teenagers), Florida judge rules that laws banning sagging, baggy pants that show shorts or bozers underclothes underneath are unconstitutional. If they’re showing off a thong or their bare ass, though, that’s a whole ‘nother thing.

Before getting to the media’s offerings for today, let’s take a moment to reflect on Liberal Eagle's commentary on how not many people seem to be outraged at the McCain/Palin prevarication show. Perhaps because the media spent all the credibility they ever had by obsessing over trivialities and such things as haircut costs or the presence of a teleprompter at a candidate's event where the candidate delivers a speech, and now when they’re trying to get the people’s attention, the people are saying, “What wolf?” Or, perhaps, if bradhicks is right, the populace says, "Yeah, he's lying to me about his promises, but his promises are bigger than the other guy's, so he'll try harder to achieve them.". Which makes the voting populace basically willing to be lied to, and making positive decisions based on the size of the lie, rather than whether or not the candidate intends on actually making and fulfilling the promises made.

Onward to the news.

It’s a banner week for Saudi clerics - first TV station owners, then astrologers, now Mickey Mouse is a tool of Satan, an impure creature, and deserves to die.

Canada's Conservative Quebec chief apologized after his assistant was concerned that in a meeting with Native Algonquins, the natives would show up intoxicated. I think they’re reading the story about Windsor Castle, the royal residence, getting brew meant for Windsor Castle, the pub.

Google will now carry advertisements from religious groups on topics like abortion, so long as they do so "factually", according to Google. Which means we may be seeing more from the couple that wants "bride" and "groom" back on the California wedding certificate, because the new gender-neutral certificate is unacceptable. Because they have to have those words on what is essentially a civil contract.

Significantly more seriously, Extremists attacked the United States embassy in Yemen. The attackers were unable to breach the walls. The current administrator seized the opportunity to remind the country they are stuck in a Concept War, and his officials started playing up Yemen as a terror threat.

Not ones to miss a hammer shot when they can take it, the TSA's ops center has been renamed the Freedom Center. Bash them in the head enough times and say the word, and perhaps they’ll actually believe it’s being promoted and provided to the populace.

Africa needs a lot more aid. The situation in a lot of countries is deteriorating.

The Chinese people are looking for answers on how melamine, a toxic chemical, got into baby formula. The tainted milk has put several babies in intensive care. They’re also wondering how it is that gentlemen bought spent uranium from Kyrgyzstan, too. China seems to be have a spate of interesting times.

Pakistan said the United States did not warn them of an incoming missile strike before allegedly dropping one in on the northwest part of the country. This obviously doesn’t help the already strained relations between the two countries.

In the domestic sphere, while there's some panic that the House actually passed a bill that would ease the bans on offshore drilling, Liberal Seagull says it's lots of smoke and no fire, especially with a Presidential veto and the Dems unlikely to try for an override.

An internal audit of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives finds 76 weapons and 418 laptops are unaccounted for over the past five years. They assure us, however, that only a very small amount of the missing laptops has classified or encrypted data on them.

In economic matters, The FDIC has made noises that it might need to borrow some cash from the Treasury to make sure it can cover insured deposits if more banks and thrifts fail, the central banks of several countries injected cash into their banking systems to stabilize and prevent more collapses worldwide. Things are going on long enough to generate satirical vocabularies and serious analyses of just how bad things are getting.

Talking candidates, the Libertarian presidential nominee filed a suit in Texas court claiming that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain had met the filing deadlines to get on the State's ballot, because neither had filed their paperwork as the candidate of the party by the requisite deadline.

That’s the funny part. Unfortunately, it does get worse. Senator McCain believed the President of Spain to be either the leader of a country in Latin America, a drug lord, or has no idea who he is. In any of those cases, that’s definitely one of those gaffes that could impact one’s foreign-policy expertise credentials. Liberal Seagull goes after Senator McCain's policy on health care, noting that it could easily break the system and produce an opposite effect of what he wants.

Governor Palin doesn’t escape the baleful eye, either - an e-mail account she has got hacked by members claiming to be part of Anonymous, which no doubt turns the heat up on the chans. The revelation that she was apparently doing official business from a personal e-mail account has accountability people raising their eyebrows as well. The Republican campaign is siccing the FBI on the hacks.

More Palin: The preacher who brought her into her church apparently founded his ministry by hunting witches, she's said that state employees will refuse to answer subpoenas in the case informally dubbed "Troopergate", which is defying a lawful court order compelling testimony. Either she’s figured out the current administrator’s handbook, or she’s about to be in a world of hurt when the police say, “That’s nice. Now, you’re under arrest and will be brought in to give testimony, or you will spend time in jail until you give that testimony.” (Or something like that. I’m not actually sure what the penalties are for ignoring a subpoena.)

Candidate opinions start with advice to Senator McCain to play the reform message way up and cast the net wide,
advice for the Senator to bring out his economic credential to fill a supposed gap in Senator Obama's narratives,
Dennis Prager calls out Charlie Gibson as being not only mean, but deliberately intending to humiliate Sarah Palin on air, and slides in a comment that the Republican is fighting both the Democrat and the media for the President. Cal Thomas goes straight after the liberal wing of politics, repeating the sentiment that liberals believe anyone not a liberal is insane or stupid.

David Limbaugh finds Governor Palin a sincere and practicing Christian, nothing more, surrounded by a bunch of liberals who are trying to scare the populace by painting her as someone who won't respect the church-state divide. Yet the Governor’s God-talk is different than say, the Senator’s - he speaks of prayer, she speaks of war as God’s work. Admittedly, if you believe the worst excesses about the churches of both of them, they’re both potentially pretty fringe, but the Senator’s fringe seems to be more focused about social issues and the need to bring about the kingdom that elevates the low and humbles the high, rather than destroying the unbelievers to bring about a new world. Or supporting torture, at least until reminded of an actual teaching of the religion they profess to follow.

Maureen Johnson on why we need sex education - to insist on abstinence-only education is to deny the biological reality of humanity and adolescence - the part where the chemicals come out fast and keep telling the body to go find a nice mate, settle down, and have kids. And for those who aren’t fond of Governor Palin’s stance on the matter, stardance offers a way of exacting a tiny revenge on her.

Thomas Sowell expresses his belief that Senator Obama is unfit for office because he's all talk and no action, and in the face of Iran planning to nuke everyone out of existence, we can’t have someone who wants to talk instead of nuking them preemptively.

In opinions not of the candidates, Thomas Sowell tells African-Americans that they have worse problems to worry about than whether they're maintaining their cultural identity, and once they start being highly successful and pull themselves out of poverty, they can wonder about cultural preservation.

Phyllis Schlafly complains about likely Democratic-friendly voter fraud, through laws that make it easier to register and harder to purge... although if the Republicans control the vote boxes, it won’t really matter all that much how many turn out to vote, will it? Six of one, half-dozen of the other. Sort of. The GOP is also campaigning in Pennsylvania to enforce an old ban on political clothing at the polling place, which is currently interpreted to mean that so long as the person wearing the clothes isn’t actively trying to convince anyone else to change their mind, it’s okay to wear your Obama or Palin shirt to the poll.

Walter E. Williams plants the blame for the current housing and credit crunch on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 - a government act, not a market one, The WSJ feels that the Fed and the Treasury are charting a very dangerous path with their bailout decisions, as Russia flounders, possibly being punished for its aggresiveness as its markets also flop. The Fed is advised not to join the panic, and Christopher Wood says that if we crash hard, we can start rebuilding sooner.

Thane Rosenbaum keeps to "victory in Iraq" drumbeat alive , continuing to insist that despite how it was presented, whether it was actually connected to the Concept War, and whether it’s even legal, the only important thing about the situation in Iraq is that it’s quiet now and we won. Kevin Mooney agrees, feeling that the last year makes the hawks look good. Michael Fumento believes that the reports about bad things in Anbar province were all exaggerated.

In science and technology, a web browser aiming for three dimensional browsing, computers attempting to figure out the semantic meanings of words, using virtual worlds to provide therapy for PTSD and otehr mental wounds, Google and GE going green with initiatives, as well as a new Google Labs venture that aims to index everything said on a particular audio (or audiovisual) file, and improvements in facial-recognition at low resolutions.

On the tail end - tips for knocking out bad habits, a gallery of erotically posed anatomically incorrect dolls. From a distance, though, they look pretty NSFW, so it’s probably worthwhile to view these at home. Although, in Japan, a gent has been charged with dumping his silicone girlfriend illegally. And, of course, research on the evolution of the anus.

Oh, and the source code for the original Donkey Kong, with Jumpman, a steampunk-style hands-free device, miniature horses used in therapy, and a clock that reminds us time is not on our side.